THE JOHN F. KENNEDY Memorial Hospital, the key referral medical center, was not spared from the wave of wanton destruction that prevailed during the fourteen year war. Not only was it looted by false priests and pseudo-liberators armed with lethal missiles and rifles alongside their civilians pillagers, the institution suffered severe and extensive brain drain and droughts of the nation's key referral hospital consequently led to negligible meeting of the health care needs of Liberians, a dire scenario from which the nation has not yet fully recovered despite the so-called return of normalcy.

SUCCESSIVE TRANSITIONAL AND the elected governments following the war have not been able to resuscitate the JFK hospital to its pre-war status. The imbalances in demand and supply of drugs, logistics and equipment, have been acutely felt by all concerned. This state of affairs has rendered the hospital inconsequential as far as tertiary health care delivery is concern.

DESPITE THIS GLOOMY scenario, heartwarming news has emerged of discussions between the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital and the Mount Sinai Medical Center based in New York, United States of America for the establishment of long-term partnership. Furthermore, it is heralded that some 30 doctors and nurses from that advanced medical institution, have arrived in the country to collaborate in reactivating the health center perform its goals. The same physicians, as a mark of wholeheartedness are also said to have traveled to Phebe Hospital in Bong County, where they selflessly provided free medical services to sick residents.

MOREOVER WE RECOGNIZE, with ample appreciation that the 30 doctors' visit to Liberia has been facilitated through the joint funding of the Clinton Global Initiative and the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in partnership with a USA-based Liberian Non governmental Organization, Project Momentum, headed by its founder and CEO, Dougba Caranda-Martin III. Caranda-Martin's organization, we are made to understand, has shipped medical aid to Liberia totaling more than US $9-million dollars with the JFK Medical Center and the ELWA hospital as main beneficiaries.

WE HAIL THIS historic visit of the doctors and the impact they are having on the restoration of health care in the country. The corresponding collaboration between the JFK Hospital and the Mount Sinai Medical Center is highly encouraging and testimonial of the historic ties between Liberia and the United States that is symbolically immortalized after a towering American President, on Liberia's key medical edifice.

RESUSCITATING THE JOHN F. Kennedy Medical Hospital, to make it functional beyond mediocrity is a commendable undertaking that administrators of the collaborating institutions must work assiduously at sustaining. Indeed, this nation needs all such partnerships to get back on its tiny feet in order to forge ahead with other responsibilities of nationhood as a member of the wider comity of nations.

LOOKING AT THE other side of the exemplary milestones being set by the visiting physicians, we must thank our own doctors, for braving the storms over the years to stay in a murky environment. We must however exhort our doctors, nurses, physician assistants, midwives, dressers and other medical practitioners who have been making enormous sacrifices to keep the momentum of healthcare delivery to the barest minimum to the public. The example of the visitors must challenge all of citizen doctors to go to rural areas, to the villages and hamlets, to areas without modern amenities of life and display or put to use the medical skills acquired over the years. Our doctors must endeavor to take jobs amongst the rural folks who direly need them because the nature of their occupation is a caring one intended to save lives instead of maximizing profits in cash and real estates. We cannot go to the extreme of remind these compatriots that both the Florence Nightingale Pledge and the Hippocratic Oath were sworn with such goals in mind to uphold the humanitarian profession for the preservation of life, even if at the peril of their own lives.

THE JFK MEDICAL Center is the single largest hospital in terms of the kinds of services it originally offered. Citizens yearn for the days when the hospital will render all services that will ensure their health and welfare. As much as they would like to see, the institution must be seen to attract patients from the various neighboring countries coming to the JFK for quality medical treatment. When they come and obtain heartwarming treatments, they will leave with the favorable impression that Liberia that had been the scene of chaos has significantly been restored, and that their healthy lives would be the examples.

WE URGE OUR visiting doctors and nurses to be our goodwill ambassadors of the country. Tell others in the United States as well as elsewhere that this country's health care delivery service needs everybody and everything. Tell them to see their contributions, regardless of their occupations, as vitally indispensable to the national restoration process. Liberians will always remain grateful for whatever is contributed to impact their lives, especially the peasant population, who are depend on the JFK for less expensive medical treatment.